I'm a children's book editor living in Brooklyn and working in Manhattan. I post about books, publishing, life, travel, food, and other random stuff. I'm newly widowed, and may post about my grief and recovery on occasion as well.

Monday, November 30, 2009

NCTE 2009 wrap-up

As I mentioned last week, I was in Philadelphia for the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) conference. I took the train to Philadelphia and met Grace at the hotel, then we walked over to the conference center to meet Jarrett Krosockza and his wife Gina for a quick lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe.

Then Grace and I ran off for her session on "The Art of Story" with author Carmen Agra Deedy. We had a few technical difficulties at first, but then her talk went smoothly and I think the audience was impressed by her talk. I know I was!

Carmen was a fantastic speaker/storyteller as well--her final story about her mother in a mall parking lot brought me to tears.

I helped out for our Jerry Pinkney signing in the afternoon, then escaped to the hotel for a quick nap.

That night Assistant Editor Connie Hsu and I took "our" authors to dinner at another amazing restaurant called Supper. Once again, I'm sad that I neglected to get any pictures of authors Matthew Quick (Sorta Like a Rock Star, pubbing in May 2010) and his wife Alicia Bessette, Grace, or Stephen Emond (Happyface, Connie's first acquisition, pubbing in March 2010), but I did manage two photos of the food. Here's the farmer's plate we ordered for the table:

And my duck and waffles. Yum.

The next afternoon I had coffee (and cheese--odd combination, I know) with the incredible Janet Wong, and then that evening was the cocktail party that kicks off the ALAN Workshops where Sarah Ockler and Sara Zarr vamped it up:

And then it was off to our YA fiction dinner where Matthew Quick joined the two Sara(h)s at Portofino. And yes, once again, we had amazing food (spinach ravioli! tiramisu!), conversation, and this time we had the added wonderment of readings from 20 Boy Summer (Ockler), Sorta Like a Rock Star (Quick), and Once Was Lost (Zarr).

And that, my friends, sums it all up. Thank you Philly, NCTE, ALAN, all our authors and illustrators, and of course our amazing school and library marketing team of Victoria Stapleton and Zoe Luderitz.

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What does "bloomabilities" mean?

Bloomability by Sharon Creech is one of my favorite children's books. In the book, one of the characters makes up words, and in his world, "bloomability" means "possibility." I believe in bloomabilities.